


Nothing Figured Out

by Diary



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Character of Color, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Love, Mother-Son Relationship, POV Blaise Zabini, POV Character of Color, POV Male Character, Post-Canon, Post-Deathly Hallows, Post-Hogwarts, Slytherins Being Slytherins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Repost. “Your albino elf kidnapped me! Tell me, is that common behaviour for him, or did someone order him to?” Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Figured Out

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Harry Potter.

A crash rings through Blaise Zabini’s house.

Blaise jerks awake, grabs his wand, and intercepts his mother in the hallway, spins her around, and orders, “Get to the vanishing cabinet, Mum. Keep the door opened, and go to the British embassy. Have them contact the ministry.”

Near the kitchen, one of the elves is lying on the floor and bleeding. Blaise steps over him or her and eases into the kitchen. The other elves are fighting the intruder, and he snaps his fingers. They move, but he sees the stranger has a knife against the throat of his personal elf, Klinky.

Klinky gasps, “No.”

There’s a snapping of fingers, and Blaise finds himself disarmed.

“Master, no! Miss just needs some help.”

Somehow, the intruder is knocked over, and the other elves rush over to restrain them.

Quickly, Klinky hands the wand back. “Master was always so fond of her, but…”

Ignoring him, Blaise keeps his wand aimed as he kneels down to look the struggling stranger in the face.

He almost drops his wand. “Bulstrode?”

Staring back is Millicent Bulstrode.

She looks nothing like the housemate he remembers. Her hair is crudely cut above her ears, her clothes are worn and thinning, too tight in some places and too loose in others, and she’s lost a good amount of weight. She hasn’t seen a bath in some time, and she’s covered in small cuts and a few decent-sized bruises. He notices the nails she always kept short at Hogwarts have grown long and now make her hag heritage explicit.

“Bulstrode, why in the hell are you breaking into my house?”

“I didn’t,” she snaps. She tries to kick him and is promptly jabbed at with a fork by Edi. “Your albino elf kidnapped me! Tell me, is that common behaviour for him, or did someone order him to?”

“Klinky.” 

Tentatively coming over, Klinky tells him, “Miss didn’t even have a tent. She was sleeping under the trees, only her coat to keep her warm. And Klinky didn’t think she had any food with her. Klinky thought Master could talk to her-” He trails off.

“Klinky, go find my mother and tell her everything’s alright. The rest of you, help whichever of you is bleeding.”

Once they’re gone, Bulstrode waves away his offered hand and stands.

“Where’s your wand?”

“Snatchers,” she tonelessly answers. “Why was your elf in a Romanian forest?”

“I thought all the Snatchers were-”

“Two years ago,” she answers. “Haven’t been able to get another wand.”

Suddenly, he feels rather uneasy. “Bulstrode-”

“They’re both dead. My mum died asleep, and my grandmum died screaming. It turns out, my suspicions were right; my grandmum killed my father when I was about one. What I didn’t know was that, not only was he a death eater, he has a brother who’s both alive and a death eater.”

“Mission of vengeance?”

She makes a bitter sound. “Don’t humour me, Zabini. I know the odds. Most of the Snatchers are in Azkaban, and that’s where they’ll die. He’s either dead or escaped, safely tucked away. This is all I have left. It isn’t much and it is pathetic, but it’s all I have.”

He sighs.

It’s- he looks down at his watch- four-thirty in the morning, and all he can think about is how he once thought Millicent Bulstrode was going end up shocking everyone. She was so talented, so intelligent, and so determined; he thought she’d end up in the ministry, joining the elite, or running her own business. Now, the girl is gone, and in her place stands a destructive, broken woman who will die too soon.

Despite his respect for her, they were never friends, and he doesn’t know of anything he can do to prevent the latter.

“We all have to make our choices,” he notes. “Let me help you get a wand.”

She shakes her head, and he says, “Whatever you do, it isn’t my place to stop you. But we were both Slytherin, Bulstrode, and I remember the times you helped me. In case you haven’t noticed, gold isn’t a concern for me. I won’t even miss the small amount a wand costs, and more than anything, you need a wand.”

“There’s no way I can pay you back, Zabini, and I don’t accept things I-”

“If you end up dead in the middle of the woods in some foreign country, I want to be able to tell my conscience I did everything I could. A wand is the most valuable help I can give you.”

This seems to defeat her. “What am I supposed to do until a wand shop opens?”

“Take a bath and eat something. We can go in the morning. You can sleep in a guest room or on one of the couches.”

“Fine,” she agrees with a suspicious, extremely tired look.

0

“I’m sorry, Mother,” he says. “But Bulstrode helped me-”

“It’s not a problem, darling,” she says. Cupping his cheek, she continues, “I’m proud of you for helping a friend out. However, you need to do something about your elf. You’re old enough to be responsible, Blaise. Klinky can’t just go around, forcibly apparating people here.”

“Yes, Mother,” he answers. “I’ll take care of it.”

Nodding, she kisses him on the head. “I’m going back to bed. I love you, my little man.”

“I love you, too, Mother.”

0

In the living room, he throws and catches a ball of yarn to make sure Yu’s arm is completely healed. “Klinky, what were you doing in a Romanian forest at four in the morning?”

“The time’s different there, sir,” Klinky earnestly tells him.

“The point of my question still remains.”

“Special herbs, Master. Klinky was gathering them.”

Blaise sighs.

An old wizard who still receives royalties for writing some song is courting his mother. It’s about trolls and sung by female goblins. Personally, he finds the song to be incomprehensible and hates the slow, pounding beat and syrupy voices. If his mother is already planning the fool’s accidental death and enlisting Klinky’s help, he doesn’t want to know. He’s made peace with the idea his mother is what everyone whispers, and he’d rather pretend not to know anything than risk having to make some hard decisions involving her and the household elves.

“Fine,” he says. “Just, never do something like this again. That’s enough, Yu.”

A few minutes later, Bulstrode appears. The first thing he notices is her cuts and bruises are gone. The second thing is her clothes are clean and suddenly fit properly, and her hair is significantly evener. “The stabby elf healed me and gave me another haircut,” she tells him. “And one of them cleaned and altered my clothes. They have hidden pockets.”

“Edi’s the one who stabbed you, and Tillie is the one who did the clothes,” he tells her. He notices her nails are back to being short. “She probably put undetectable extendable charms on the pockets. Do you want something to eat?”

Hurrying over to her, Klinky offers, “We have Cockroach Clusters, Miss.”

0

“Blaise started his own shop a year and a half ago,” Mother tells Bulstrode. She produces a gift certificate. “Only the most fashionable clothes. He’s doing very well.”

Bulstrode politely slips the certificate in her pocket and starts in on her black pudding. “The shop doesn’t need you today?”

He shakes his head. “I sent an owl with instructions.”

“Of course, he had to dip into his trust fund,” Mother continues with a frown. “He wouldn’t let me spend the necessary gold, and the ministry- well, anyone but a Slytherin can get employment assistance these days. They have to either go through goblins or completely go at it alone. I’ve never heard of a Slytherin headmaster or mistress locking children up.”

“It was only for an hour, Mother. They evacuated us via the Room of Requirement. And I was seventeen.”

“If a death eater had broken in or if Parkinson and her friends had turned on you, you’d likely be dead. I-” She stops upon seeing the confusion on Bulstrode’s face. “Pansy Parkinson tried to hand Harry Potter over to Voldemort. Headmistress McGonagall’s response was to lock all the Slytherins, including the muggle-borns and the first and second years, into the Slytherin dungeons. My son didn’t come home until two hours after the Slytherins were evacuated, and he came home unconscious. Thank the gods Klinky found him before anything worse happened.”

Blaise doesn’t answer.

In truth, Klinky actually found him while he was still conscious. He’d been fighting with the other students, and Klinky had appeared after all the protective charms surrounding the castle had been broken. While he’d been trying to get Klinky to leave, someone had stunned him.

0

In Madam Rosie’s Wand Centre in Scotland, they wait while the wandmaker helps another customer.

“You stayed to fight.”

He nods. “You know I’ve never been loyal to the Dark Lord, Bulstrode.”

“Is it really as bad as your mum says?”

“Worse,” he answers. “Parkinson’s parents took her to France, and the Greengrass family has been on the ministry’s list ever since Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass started dating. There was an attempted break-in at Gringotts a few months ago, and before the day was over, many families with Slytherin members, including mine, were being interrogated. It turned out to be a bloody Ravenclaw.”

“Did someone try to hurt Parkinson?”

“The ministry sent Trackers after her. Her parents found her before they did.”

“Everyone forgets Merlin,” she comments.

Looking down, he says, “Suppose you do manage to find out where he is. He’s dead or you manage to get the upper hand. What then?”

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I still dream about them, Zabini. I dream about my mum’s body, her chest refusing to move, and I hear my grandmother’s screams. I couldn’t save them. You know how terrible I am at duelling. They had my wand and me body-bound before I could do any damage. I still don’t know how they found us. I put a tongue-tying charm on all three of us when I found out about the Taboo, and they never let the flat. I had spells and other security measures in place, and none of it did anything to stop them. I don’t know, maybe someone else triggered the Taboo. I keep thinking I should have forcibly tongue-tied everyone in the complex, everyone in town. Maybe they just invaded for fun and recognised us.”

“I know it doesn’t do anything to help,” he says, “but I am sorry.”

“Thank you.”

The wandmaker comes over. “Bonjour,” she greets with a curtsey. She’s a petite woman wearing dark green robes with white skin, brown shoulder-length, straight hair, and dark blue eyes. “I’m Mademoiselle O’Connor, Madam Rosie’s niece. Are you both here for something?”

“Just her,” Blaise answers.

“Name, please,” O’Connor inquires. She summons a floating book and digs a quill out of her robes.

“Millicent Bulstrode.”

O’Connor writes the name down, and then, says, “Oh, you’ve been flagged.”

Blaise starts to draw his wand, but O’Connor sees the way Bulstrode tenses and quickly assures them, “It’s nothing bad! Did Snatchers take your wand, or did you lose it during the war?”

“Yes. Snatchers did,” Bulstrode answers. 

Nodding, O’Connor explains, “The ministry has your wand. They keep all wands until they receive proof of death or the wand itself dies. You can go claim it, free of charge.”

0

Once lunch is finished, Blaise hands her a folded tent, a small bag of toiletries, a book on edible eating in forests, and a medikit. “Don’t argue,” he says. “None of this stuff matters. When I was eight, I wanted a tent for some reason. Mum bought me this one. It only has a bedroom and shower room, and it probably smells like coffee and old popcorn, but it’s better than sleeping out in the open. I haven’t used it since I was nine or ten. And the rest is easily replaceable stuff that you need more than I do at the moment.”

Since he knows she’ll disagree about the clothing he put inside the tent, he doesn’t mention it.

She gives him a look. “Zabini- Thank you. If I ever figure things out, I’ll contact you.”

“Take care of yourself, Bulstrode.”

For a moment, he hesitates.

“I care if you live or die. Just- so you know. If you ever wonder. Someone does.”

“That means something. Goodbye, Zabini.”

He nods, and she turns. Gray mist surrounds her, she disappears, and the mist floats away.


End file.
